Daniel Stevens Dickenson Quotes

[America should be a] nation, coextensive with the North American continent, destined by God and nature to be the most populous and powerful people ever combined under one social compact.

In certain portions of the South there are expeditions forming for the purpose of sailing to San Domingo, and of conquering that island; and in other parts, expeditions are forming for a descent on the Island of Cuba; and others are looking to the acquisition of Mexico, with the ultimate creation of a new republic, commencing with Virginia at the North, and embracing San Domingo, Cuba, and Mexico up to Central America. All these wild measures, to our certain knowledge, are embraced more or less by certain parties now in Washington, and scattered over the South.

We are also looking to Canada as we continue to integrate the North American energy market.

First, to begin with, Mexico is North American; the one that is using wrong the term is United States. United States is not North America. North America is Mexico, United States, and Canada.

It is impossible not to look forward to distant times when our rapid multiplication will expand … and cover the whole northern if not the southern continent.

When we have the red man's consent, let the union spread from the east to the west sea; and if Texas petitions Congress to be adopted among the sons of liberty, give her the right hand of fellowship; and refuse not the same friendly grip to Canada and Mexico.

Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it.

It is, beyond question, the destiny of our race to spread themselves over the continent of North America, and this at no distant day.

The Bush administration as well as Mexico and Canada have persons in the government in all three countries who want to a see a North American Union as well as a highway system that would bring goods into the west coast of Mexico and transport them up through Mexico into the United States and then in onto Canada.

Annexation [of Mexico] … because the United States is destined to supplant all other governments on this continent [and] … leading Mexico to a higher plane of civilization.

We are destined to own and control the whole western continent from Baffin's bay to the Caribbean sea ... we need not be in a hurry. When the fruit is ripe, it will fall into our hands.

We must march from ocean to ocean .... We must march from Texas straight to the Pacific Ocean, and be bounded only by its roaring wave .... It is the destiny of the white race, it is the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Who believes that a score of victories over Mexico, the annexation of half her provinces, will give us more Liberty, a purer Morality?

It being perhaps the only large tract of country and certainly the first which lying out of the boundaries of the Union will be settled by the people of the United States.

[Arguing against isolationism:] This country is not looking for prestige. It has all it can use. It is not looking for power. It has, likewise, all that it knows how to use .... [But] are we willing to live behind a Maginot Line or a Great Wall of China here on the North American continent, and trade and travel in the rest of the world only as permitted by a stronger power than we are?

Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North or South, is to be peopled … speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws.

The acquisition of Canada this year … will be a mere matter of marching and will give us experience for the attack on Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.

I would be quite willing personally to leave the whole country as a wilderness for the next half-century, but I fear that if Englishmen do not go there, Yankees will.

We have quietly and almost without observation, annexed all the country between here [Ottawa] and the Rocky Mountains.

The promised land is now before us. Up then and take it.

The President [Thomas Jefferson] has been all his life a man of letters, very speculative and a lover of glory, and it would be possible he might attempt to perpetuate the fame of his administration … by discovering … the way by which Americans may some day extend their population and their influence up to the Pacific Ocean

Then came the conquest. We were conquered people, our hearts set on surviving in some small way on a continent that had become Anglo-Saxon.

The emancipation of Texas will extend the principles of self-government, over a rich and neighbouring country, and open a vast field there for enterprise, wealth, and happiness, and for those who wish to escape from the frozen blasts of a northern climate, by removing to a more congenial one. It will promote and accelerate the march of the present age, for it will open a door through which a bright and constant stream of light and intelligence will flow from this great northern fountain over the benighted regions of Mexico

Public sentiment with us repudiates possession without use, and this sentiment is gradually acquiring the force of established public law It will come to pass that the confederated democracies of the Anglo-American race will give this great continent as an inheritance to man

Many have passed idly through the Indian schools during the last decade, afterward to boast of their charity to the North American Indian. But few there are who have paused to question whether real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of civilization